


Superposition

by genevievedarcygranger



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Have Their Picnic (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Implied Sexual Content, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot, Other, Out of Character, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Picnics, Romance, Short One Shot, Song: Superposition (Young the Giant), Star Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25867210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genevievedarcygranger/pseuds/genevievedarcygranger
Summary: Crowley asks Aziraphale to take a look at the stars with him.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	Superposition

_"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."_

\- Lady Windermere's Fan _, Oscar Wilde_

* * *

If there was one thing Crowley loved best about humans, it was their innovation.

Humans were so curious, they asked questions, they sought to make things better, easier for their lives. Crowley, who had been there since the Beginning and was intimately familiar with what made their lives as humans so challenging, loved seeing how far humanity came with each new invention. They really were made in the Almighty's image that way. They made such wonderful – and weird – things.

Of course, some of their inventions were cruel. It is as Crowley told Aziraphale when he rescued him from discorporation the first time; "Animals don't kill each other with clever machines, Angel. Only humans do that."

The invention of the guillotine was one made entirely out of hatred. Crowley disliked it intensely, though the other demons in hell thought it was the cleverest thing. While he slunk about France, associating his name with the chaos to please his superiors, Crowley detested visiting the public executions. He had quoted his superiors directly when Crowley said that the Revolution had devolved from freedom into "Cutting off lots of people's heads very efficiently with a big head-cutting machine." So, what could have started off with noble intentions soon devolved into a blood bath. The Jacobins and Parisian crowd and Sans-Culottes just started pointing their fingers at anyone for the blade. If Crowley had not been there for the angel… well, he might have lost his temper if Aziraphale lost his head.

The angel. Aziraphale was a luddite, obviously. Just look at his bookshop. Sure, Crowley was slow to change, too, but that was more for sentimental reasons. Just look at his attachment to his car for proof of that. And the car's own attachment to Queen, who remains the best band in existence. But Aziraphale disliked cars, all cars for going too fast. He preferred to linger, to relish, to stop and smell the roses. According to Aziraphale, humanity's best innovations were always food related. Look what they did to pears when they glazed them, to cucumbers when they pickled them, to apples when they pied them. Crowley was not as impressed.

But out of all of humanity's innovations, their desire to explore fueled their best ones. The humans had such an infatuation with space that Crowley felt more than a little vain about it. First it was the telescope, their attempt to chart every star, even the stars they couldn't see with their naked eyes. Later, much later after the car, which was his favorite invention for a while, it was their satellites and rocket ships. They made it all the way to moon and yet they still wanted more.

Crowley definitely felt responsible for that. Wasn't he the one who first tempted them away from Eden? Eden which was a garden plot on the great mass that was Earth? Earth which is only a speck in the Almighty's creation of the Universe? No space was enough for humanity. Go forth and multiply, all that. With something like fatherly pride, Crowley was glad they were so inquisitive, that they wanted to touch the stars that he had a hand in.

* * *

On a whim which struck him few and far in between, Crowley stopped by Aziraphale's bookshop one night when the street lights were already lit. He breezed inside, knowing that he was welcome, and he was pleased that the lights were still on in the back. Aziraphale had not yet gone to bed.

"Crowley!" He greeted him warmly as soon as his blue eyes lit upon him over the rim of his tiny glasses, lifting from the ancient tome that rested on his thick thighs. "So good to see you." Then the angel seemed to realize the lateness of the hour. "Oh my. Did I miss any dinner plans?"

"No, Angel." Instead of climbing into his usual spot on the couch, Crowley remained standing, listing slightly in the doorway like a shadow. His expression was seemingly impassive behind his shaded eyes. "We didn't have any dinner plans, but I was wondering if you'd go on a drive with me."

Aziraphale checked his clock but still pulled the glasses from their precarious perch on the bridge of his nose. Crowley took it as a good sign. "A drive at this hour? Oh, well, I suppose my stomach is settled from my late lunch earlier." Gently, he picked up the ancient tome, making a note of his place before tenderly setting it aside with an affectionate pat to its cover. "Where are we going? A spot of nosh from one of those late-night pubs, I hope?"

If Crowley weren't so accustomed to Aziraphale's appetite, he might have smiled. As it is, he just shook his head, faintly amused. "No, I have a different spot in mind. But we could pack something for a midnight snack."

Pushing himself up from his overstuffed armchair, Aziraphale immediately made a beeline to the kitchen. "I have just the thing! Some cheese and crackers, a few pepperonis and olives…" he mumbled, talking mostly to himself as he hunted through his cabinets and refrigerator.

"I said a midnight snack, Aziraphale, not a midnight lunch," Crowley admonished without any real heat, following after the angel. He watched as Aziraphale pulled out a basket, a familiar looking one, and start adding all the food that would be used on a charcuterie board.

"Well, if it's a long drive, we might get peckish on the way back, Crowley. I'm only thinking ahead. You should think of this like a picnic. Come now, what bottle should I pair with this picnic?"

"A cabernet sauvignon. Try the one from 1939," Crowley suggested imperiously.

"Ah, '39." Aziraphale winced, a delicate expression that wrinkled his upturn nose and put a deeper, more severe dimple on his chubby cheeks. "Not the best year. More like the beginning of the end, if you want to consider it such."

"Not a good year, but the wine speaks for itself. Pretty catchy Queen song, though. Underrated. Come now, Angel. You've got your picnic. Let's go."

* * *

Intuitive, as soon as Crowley cranked on the Bentley, Queen blared through the speakers. " _Don't you hear my call though you're many years away? Don't you hear me calling you? Write your letters in the sand for the day I take your hand in the land that our grandchildren knew_ …"

Of course, Aziraphale tuned out the music and was chatty throughout the car ride. He asked where they were going, and he chided Crowley for speeding despite the traffic being next to nonexistent thanks to the lateness of the hour. He clutched the picnic basket in his lap like a lifeline, protectively curling his body around the fragile wine bottle. Crowley kept glancing over at him from the corner of his eye to see if Aziraphale dared to try to eat in the Bentley, but Aziraphale managed to refrain.

"Crowley, slow down!" Aziraphale flapped his hand at the streetlights on the sidewalk that jumped out of the way miraculously. "Where can we possibly be going at this hour? Nowhere is open!"

"Calm down, Angel. We're just going to the country."

"The country?" Despite being a Principality and a guard at the East Gate of Eden, Aziraphale did not hold much love for the wilder side of the Almighty's creation. City life suited him best as he acclimated where the people were, where it was safest. Crowley supposed that life without a giant flaming sword did that to people.

"Yes. It's where we can get our best view," Crowley explained, lazily navigating the Bentley with the wrist of his left hand balancing on the steering wheel, the touch more of a suggestion than anything for the vehicle to follow. "As nifty as all these lights are, they are terrible at blocking out all the stars from the sky with their pollution."

Though Aziraphale sounded a little calmer than before, he still managed to sound fussy as he asked, "So you wanted to see your stars? I promise you they are still there as you left them."

"Well, that's where you're wrong, Angel. My stars are dead," Crowley stated coolly.

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Crowley. I'm sure the Almighty intended –"

"My stars' deaths are part of the Ineffable Plan, Angel, in their own way, I suppose," Crowley interrupted to save Aziraphale from making any sort of apology. "I knew that they would die. They are so far away, so long ago, but on Earth, the humans get to see them and wish on them anyway. I understand it, well, as much as any of us can try to understand the Ineffable. But sometimes I just want to see them for myself, and this is the best way I can do it."

For a moment, Aziraphale was silent, not even muttering to himself about how recklessly Crowley was driving. Then he finally asked, "I know you wear your glasses so that the humans don't see your eyes, dear, but do your glasses make it harder to see your stars? Especially at night, I wonder, with it dark and all. Do you really need to wear them now?"

Crowley was thankful that he was staring at the road now, however needlessly. The interior of the car was also mercifully dim as the Bentley strayed further and further away from London's well-lit interior. It was unlikely that Aziraphale could see his blush. "I suppose I could."

"I've always wanted to ask why you wear them when it is only the two of us," Aziraphale started nervously babbling, filling up the suddenly cramped interior of the Bentley with so many superfluous words. "We know each other, and we also know each other's true natures. I'm an angel; you, a demon. There's nothing about you or your eyes or your habits that would unsettle me, dear. You meet all of my expectations."

Sardonically, Crowley replied, "Well, it's not hard to meet such exceedingly low expectations. I am a demon, as you said. What can you expect from me but the very worst?"

Aziraphale's chiding compared to earlier was terse in comparison. "That's not what I meant, dear, and you know it. Please don't put words in my mouth."

Chin dipping towards his chest, Crowley softly spoke his not-quite-apology, "Alright, Angel. I won't. Didn't mean anything by it."

But the angel, despite being an angel, was not yet ready to forgive and only huffed in response. The rest of the ride went a little smoother as the road simplified in the country, but it was definitely quiet except for the roar of the engine. Crowley fancied he felt a little cold.

* * *

They found the perfect spot in a clearing of the woods that was just off the road. Thankfully, that meant that they didn't have to try to hike through the forest at this late hour, nor did they have to leave the Bentley too far away, though it did collect a bit of dirt in its tires as the asphalt gave way. They were far from civilization now, no disturbances from light pollutions or curious humans. The angel and the demon were alone.

"Right, let's get out and stretch our legs a bit and then we can find a good spot for your picnic, Angel." Crowley started, the first to break the silence. He finally looked over at Aziraphale and noted that he seemed unsettled more than upset now. "What is it, Angel? We're the most powerful beings here."

"Yes, I know that. It's just the bugs. Mosquitos. Nasty, crawly things." His lips puckered and he ducked his eyes, seemingly aware of what he said. "Present company always excluded of course."

Unoffended, Crowley offered, "Yes, I suppose it would take a miracle to keep the insects away from your picnic. Consider it done." And before Aziraphale could embarrass him with his effusive thanks, Crowley escaped his Bentley.

After Crowley performed his miracle, Aziraphale followed after him to a spot in the clearing a little bit further from the road. Crowley wanted a wide expanse of sky uninterrupted by things like tree lines or the possibility of a passing car's headlights. Once he deemed a spot worthy enough, he miracle a tartan picnic blanket just for the angel and ignored his pleased thanks until the angel was sprawled and setting up all the things for tea, except instead of tea, he uncorked the wine. "Oh, I appeared to have forgotten some glasses for us."

Crowley wasn't even looking at him, still on his feet as he walked the perimeter of the picnic blanket in circular motions. From behind his customary shades, his eyes were trained on the sky, void of clouds. "Not to worry, Angel. You can have the bottle for yourself."

"Nonsense, dear. There's no reason we can't share the bottle." Crowley heard the slosh of the wine and chanced a glance at the angel, catching him in the act of wrapping his lips around the neck of the bottle. He quickly looked back up again, his mind miles away from his stars. Blithely unaware of Crowley's thoughts, Aziraphale continued, "That's the best part of picnicking and dinners. Tasting the food, savoring the flavors, experimenting with new combinations, all good stuff. But what is the point of all the discovery unless there is someone to share it with?" The angel's outstretched arm tempted the demon with the bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

Feeling a little more in control of himself, the demon looked down at the angel and accepted the bottle. "No point in wasting a miracle on wine glasses, I suppose," Crowley said entirely to himself as he took a fortifying sip. He barely tasted the wine as he tried to taste the angel's lips instead.

After he passed the bottle back, Aziraphale was smiling to himself. Clearly, Crowley was forgiven. Aziraphale's attention strayed back to the food as he stacked slices of pepperoni and cheese on crackers. And though Crowley drove all the way out here to see his stars, he had yet to lift his gaze from the angel's face.

"Crowley?" The angel began to ask, his concentration still on crafting his cracker sandwiches. "You still haven't removed your glasses, dear. Won't you, for me?"

Like a planet around a star, Crowley revolved around Aziraphale, basking in his angelic presence. "If you really want me to Angel," he acquiesced, pulling his glasses off. They were soon tucked away into his coat pocket for safe-keeping, and he mused that Aziraphale's hair was really that bright even in all this darkness with not even the moon to alight upon their company.

Shyly, Aziraphale peeked up at Crowley through his lashes. Somehow, Crowley managed to avoid his eye as his unhindered eyes took in the expanse of starry sky above them. Aziraphale reckoned that Crowley's eyes were striking, but from the angle where he kneeled at Crowley's feet, he could see traces of angelic beauty in the angular contours of Crowley's pointed jawline and cheekbones. Fallen as he was, he was still always so beautiful throughout all of time.

"Isn't that better?" Aziraphale commented, having yet to take another swig of the wine or a bite of his snack. "See any familiar ones up there? You'll have to point out the constellations to me. I'm much better at reading books than star charts, you know."

Wryly, Crowley's lips peeled themselves into a smile. "See that there? That should be, uh, let's see. Orion, obviously. You can tell by his belt."

Aziraphale craned his neck, following the point of Crowley's index finger. "Oh, yes I see. Orion. Did you ever meet the fellow?"

"I'm afraid he's one of the ones that doesn't really exist, to my knowledge."

"Hmm…most of those Greek fellows are, unfortunately. A few of them from the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are real, but are as…unsavory as their myths portray them." Aziraphale finally took a nibble at his cracker sandwich.

"Spend much time in Ancient Greece did you, Angel?" Crowley clasped his hands at the base of his spine, wondering away as he looked for other constellations to point out to the angel.

"Not as much time as Mesopotamia or Ancient Rome, but I did travel a fair bit when required. The olives were very good, and then there was this delicious honey. Sopping bread in that honey, mmm, that was ambrosia." Aziraphale moaned to himself at the memory and started making himself another cracker sandwich.

A shudder rolled through Crowley's body at Aziraphale's moan. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it was the food that stood out to you from your time there."

"Oh, well, the food, yes. There were a few other pleasantries, some young gentlemen…" Aziraphale trailed off. "Can't for the life of me remember what miracles I performed."

Crowley tried not the linger on the mental image of Aziraphale with a toga breezing around his knees, surrounded by some sweaty Greeks lubing their muscles up with olive oil. "I did spend much of my time in Ancient Greece, mostly to check out their Oracle. There were several of them, none of them really real so much as very lucky. Good guessers, but hardly prophetic."

"Oh? What business did you have with oracles?"

"My lot has always been obsessed with the End, Angel. They want to be sure they've got it right, and we've come close to early Apocalypses a time or two. All those earthquakes and wars and fires in Ancient Greece certainly looked appealing. Not as much as the human orchestrated chaos that came out with WWII, but…" He broke off in a sputtering noise, dismissing it as human-concocted nonsense, a fruitless endeavor. Not wanting to bask in any unpleasant memories anymore, Crowley waved the topic away. "No matter now. See that? That's Scorpio, supposedly what killed Orion. How'd you like it if you were immortalized alongside the beast that killed you? Those Greeks certainly had a sense of humor."

"Their tragedies were something else, much different from Shakespeare's," Aziraphale agreed, giving up the topic easily. "Just as bloody all the same. They served as some inspiration for him, I recall."

"I still like his funny ones, but his _Julius Caesar_ wasn't that bad." Crowley rolled his shoulders in a gesture that was a little too elegant to be deemed just a shrug.

"Ah, I can assume it is because, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings,' that bit, dear?" Aziraphale recited to him, still happily noshing.

Pausing in his strolls, Crowley looked back down at the angel, expression carefully blank. Without his glasses, though, he could not disguise the tenderness of his eyes. "Right in one, Angel. Pass the bottle, would you?"

Once again, the bottle of cabernet sauvignon was passed between them, their lips gracing the same space. When the bottle was back in his hands, Aziraphale carefully tucked it back into the basket. He settled down more comfortably on the tartan picnic blanket, choosing to outstretch his legs and recline on his elbows, occasionally popping the stray olive into his mouth. The blues of his eyes reflected every star's light brilliantly as if it were part of the whole bunch. "Why don't you join me down here, Crowley?" Aziraphale invited him. "I have an excellent view of your stars from where I'm sitting."

Crowley only just managed to tame his eyebrows back from crawling up his forehead towards his hairline. "Really? Comfortable, Angel?"

Aziraphale managed to look up his nose at Crowley. "If I watch you walk anymore circles, I might get dizzy. Come sit with me, dear."

Without another word of protest, Crowley lowered himself to Aziraphale's level. He mimicked his sprawl as well, though Crowley chose to prop himself on one elbow, angling his body towards Aziraphale, only one leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee. This close to him, he had a hard time concentrating on the stars.

For a moment, it was quiet. Crowley's miracle kept even the chirp of crickets away, and it was blessedly cool, but not so much so that their clothes could not protect them. The more they sipped their wine, the warmer their insides were, chasing away the chill at their fingertips and fueling the blush of their cheeks. Only when the bottle was half-full did Crowley once again break the silence between them. "The picnic basket looks familiar."

"Hm? The picnic basket? Oh, it should." Aziraphale's face flushed even darker, nearly the same color as the wine. The blush paired with the stain of red on his lips made the white of his teeth stand out starker when he chuckled to himself. "I originally obtained it during Queen Victoria's reign. We spent many a day at St. James's Park picnicking and feeding ducks, if you remember."

It only took Crowley a moment to reflect on those times. "Oh, yes. Before the circumstances of our agreement were…altered."

"Before it went a little pear-shaped with us for a while, you mean," Aziraphale succinctly phrased it, pointing his nose skyward with smugness.

Crowley chose to let the moment pass with nothing more than a noncommittal hum. They both went back to gazing at the stars and only sneaking looks at the other when they were sure they weren't peeking. Their sense of timing, familiar with the rhythms of the other, was the only reason they never caught the other in the act.

"Do you miss it?" Aziraphale whispered, his breath barely a puff in the air.

"What do I miss?" Crowley asked, his words not yet slurred by the wine.

"Heaven?" That finally drew Crowley's eyes back to Aziraphale's face as he balked at the question. Aziraphale looked like he regretting asking. But he didn't take the question back, instead waiting for an answer.

"Sometimes. I mean, who wouldn't? But I…don't remember it much. Anywhere is better than Hell, and I guess in some ways Heaven is better than here. But Heaven has _The Sound of Music_ all the time, and I could live without that," Crowley drawled, completely honest.

"Oh, I agree," Aziraphale nodded. "Heaven is great, but Earth remains the Almighty's best design, superior even with its flaws." He seemed unafraid of making this statement. "Earth has so many scrumptious treats, after all, and then there are all the humans. They're not so bad as the others think of them."

"Nor so good," Crowley added darkly, but then immediately lightened his tone, "but you're right, Angel. There are some things here that even Heaven does not have."

"Like you."

Crowley paused, wondering if his ears were working. His snake-eyes pinned a hard stare to Aziraphale as if he were under the lens of a microscope, but Aziraphale's face was as open and honest as always, though there was a touch of fear to his wide, blue eyes.

"Angel…"

"No, Crowley, I am not finished." Fortified by the wine, Aziraphale straightened up until he was on his knees again. He reached out to Crowley, taking one of his hands into both of his own. "I have been dwelling on this for a while, and I realize that we have been here since the Beginning. Still, despite all that time between then and now, you and I kept meeting. It's part of the Ineffable Plan, I'm sure of it."

And though Crowley knew that there were things like Fate and Destiny because of prophecies and the work of the Almighty, he would not a demon unless he were a little more cynical. In this case, he was an outright skeptic that his and the angel's Arrangement had anything to do with Heaven or Hell or anything greater than themselves. It was simply science. He was a being of evil and Aziraphale was a being of good. They were drawn together like magnets to cancel the other out, to exist in their own neutrality. Switzerland had absolutely nothing on their relationship.

Put another way, it was a lot like Crowley's stars. Each were on their own wavelength hurling through the vacuum of space, but some stars like the Sun managed to create such a gravitational pull with its sheer size that everything else just gets caught up in that, say the planets. And some planets have their own moons for the same reason. Crowley and Aziraphale were just a pair of planets caught up in the Almighty's Ineffable Plan, but they were still intrinsically tied. The humans once tried to romanticize such a connection with the idea of soulmates, but since neither he nor Aziraphale exactly qualified, Crowley pinned it on something else. He and the angel operated on their own wavelength, superimposed on each other, spinning and rolling along towards the End, together.

"Crowley," Aziraphale's soft voice broke through Crowley's doubts. "We've been together so long, but despite the length, I don't think there will ever be enough time for the two of us."

"What are you suggesting, Angel?" Odd, Crowley distinctly tried to remain level through this conversation, but his voice was certainly hoarse when he spoke.

"We don't have to change anything!" Aziraphale squeaked. "Or we could change some things. Like…you not having to wear glasses around me if you don't want to! Or…or…" The angel dipped his head towards Crowley, still clutching at his hand.

Crowley met his mouth with his own. The angel tasted of the wine, but also faintly spicy from the olives and pepperoni. In his mind, Crowley was sure that when he convinced Eve to taste the fruit, what she must have tasted was just like this.

Just as he was the one to initiate it, the angel was also the one to break their kiss. He didn't go far, though, just pulling back enough so he could pull his bottom lip into his mouth and slowly scrape it clean with his teeth. "I have wanted to do that for some time."

"When?" Crowley asked, voice husky. He took his freehand and cradled the angel's soft, chubby cheek before pushing it through his hair, downy soft as feathers. "For me, I'd say…Paris, France, 1793."

"Very specific," Aziraphale laughed softly. He pushed his cheek back into Crowley's palm. His cheek was very, very warm, bringing life back into Crowley's fingertips. "I'd say sometime during the Beatle mania."

For once at a loss of something snarky to say, Crowley pulled the angel back in for another kiss. Crowley was not so experienced with kisses, not since his medieval days, but he never forgot how. Of course, the angel kissed divinely. This time he was the one to pull away, sighing, "We have so much lost time to make up for, my Angel."

Aziraphale flushed to the very tips of his ears. "We do, but I was thinking…do you think that we can be ourselves together?"

"Do you mean anymore than we already are?"

"Yes." Aziraphale climbed to his feet, and Crowley remained in repose, watching. He offered the demon his hand, fingers outstretched, golden pinky ring shining in the starlight. "Care to spread your wings and fly with me, dear?"

Crowley did not hesitate, even if his words were at odds with his actions. "What, here, Angel? Where anyone could see?"

Swatting at Crowley's chest, Aziraphale huffed, "We don't have to go very far or very high, dear. I just thought…well, any height would be closer to your stars."

When Crowley smiled, it was completely genuine, one of happiness. Aziraphale didn't have a clue that even when Crowley was at his lowest, he was always able to see the stars. With their fingers still joined, Aziraphale spread his wings, white as a dove's, and Crowley spread his own, as black as a crow's. When they alighted off their feet, there was no one to see them but the Almighty, and she had been waiting for this, exactly as She Ineffably Planned.

* * *

If there was one thing Crowley loved best about Earth, it's that though he could never again touch the heavens, he could still try to number the stars.

It was one reason why he strived to stay above ground and out of Hell, other than his general avoidance of Hell's general oppressive atmosphere and nasty coworkers.

And it made him a little jealous that the humans could shoot themselves into space and he was stuck here. The closest he could get to his stars would never be close enough. But at least he wasn't alone. He had the angel here.


End file.
